Learning to Balance Mood Disorders Through Spirituality and Self-Love.

Why Depression? (The Law of Attraction)

Last night I attended a talk by a successful entrepreneur who told of a point in his life when he hit rock bottom and considered taking his own life during a period of depression.

During the evening, the law of attraction was mentioned. In basic terms the law of attraction states that like attracts like: what we focus our energy and thoughts on- we attract into our lives.

The Law of Attraction

If our vibrational energy is high we attract abundance, inspiration, love, health, empowerment, love for ourselves, good fortune, wonderful experiences e.t.c. If our vibrational energy is low, we attract events/experiences/relationships e.t.c, which lower our energy even more, causing depression, anxiety, low abundance & fortune. This is a very basic description of the law of attraction! For more info click here.

It also suggests that we choose what we create and that we have the power to consciously choose our thoughts at any time. Of course, we can only choose our thoughts with conscious awareness, attention & practice, otherwise we are choosing by default.

However, the Law of Attraction brings up such questions as why the heck would we attract depression into our lives? Why would we purposely create a life where we can only contemplate despair or ending our own lives? And this was exactly the dilemma asked of our speaker yesterday by an audience member.

Why Would We Create Depression in Our Lives?

This is my take on it all:

Either we are unaware or unskilled in using the Law of Attraction- thereby we are not consciously choosing our thoughts.

OR

Some of what we create in life is chosen by us before we incarnate on earth as physical beings. Our souls choose certain experiences for our own soul growth or to balance personal or family karma.

This is something I have come to believe more and more throughout my repeated episodes of depression. Bipolar Disorder runs in our family and so I have come to the conclusion that this is some kind of karmic tie-in handed over generations.

However, every one of us has the opportunity on this Earth to overcome this karma with spiritual enlightenment and ascension.

This in my mind is achieved once we learn to ACCEPT where we are in our lives, our past traumas, all the mistakes we judge ourselves for and FORGIVE- ourselves and anyone else involved. With loving acceptance, non-judgment of ourselves and others, complete love & compassion, and acceptance of a higher, loving power, we can heal and overcome the family curse!

Surrender to Spirit seems key. I see depression as an inner battle between our ego/personality/lower selves & Spirit/higher guidance. We fight and deny our true selves to fit in with the expectations of others/what society dictates as successful. Ultimately I think the majority of people are inherently out to lead what we believe to be a “good” life in terms of causing as little harm to others as possible. But in the process we lose our true essence of soul and spirit. To surrender to our true spirit we need to surrender our ego-self and all the beliefs that go with it. We need to let go of our conditioned ideas of what a successful human being is.

I’m certainly not implying that I have in anyway achieved this! I am on the journey and have found significant improvement in my mood through letting go of negative thought patterns and replacing them with loving, supportive thoughts. I still battle on a daily basis, but I can see improvement in my care & compassion towards myself, and bit by bit I am surrendering to my true self. My ego wants me to have a 9-5 office job, fulfil the potential I showed academically at school/uni and go quietly without rocking the boat. My true essence is screaming at me to let go of this notion- it wants to create, to express my passions, to earn a living its own way. It believes in magic and spirit and wants to tell others all about it. It wants to rock the boat and cause a fuss. But my ego is scared of the rejection, disapproval and potential embarrassment.

Depression, in my mind, can be seen as a message- even a spiritual emergency: we are off track, we are not living as our true selves and perhaps it is time for some serious introspection.

One of the questions our speaker recommended we ask ourselves is:

How are you?

How are you really feeling? About life in general-where you are? Where your life is going etc.

I really enjoyed this post Rachel. I agree with you (2nd reason why we create depression!) about why we experience depression, have understanding, resulting in compassion and love. The ego, though, is a mighty powerful force to be dealt with. I often find myself dissecting myself from egoic thoughts, and refocusing on something better… positive thoughts from inner spirit. Basically, allowing who I am – love – to shine through. Sounds simple… but it isn’t!! Great post, Rachel.

Lovely to hear from you. You are so right about the ego being a mighty force and that it sounds simple, but isn’t. I believe it to be a long term process. I still feel only a little way up the mountain, but it’s better here than at the bottom :).

Great article Rachel. It’s great to hear you are putting this into action and coming from your own experience–it makes the best kind of teacher in my experience.

It has been my experience that “true” love and then gratitude foster the highest vibrations. When I was in my deepest depression, I started to affirm my gratitude on a regular basis. Even if some of the stuff I was grateful for seemed, in my conscious mind, to be untrue, if the statement of gratitude created a sense of relaxation in my body or a feeling of elation around my heart then I went with it. I believe the felt sense is just as important as the thought/affirmation when it comes to resonating on that higher vibration level. I believed this helped me to be able to see my situation from a different perspective–a higher perspective.

“True” love I feel is generally harder to practice because of all the junk that we have been told/sold (by ourselves/others/society) but I practice it by self-love and self-compassion. I also know in my heart (my true self) that there is only one love. So, like you said, it is an expression of our true self that leads to the highest vibration, resonating with whatever is also of that vibration.

It has been in my experience that the Law of Attraction can be a curse. I have at times, as I know of others, been afraid of my thoughts for what they might attract into my life. I no longer look at it that way and like to think more in terms of vibration and resonance.

I appreciate your opinion on the ego-self and letting go of what it represents. I do think that this is a practice and one that we aim at during our life time. I am more partial to practicing self-awareness and mindfulness and acceptance of my ego needs. The ego is part of our human existence and I am here to embrace that in every moment as my life unfolds. A connection with the Universe and spiritual guidance is very important to me but spiritual enlightenment does not make my bucket-list. I believe humanity is inherently compassionate and love is God so we are already enlightened… our junk is what stops us from shining.

I love that you are bringing your spirituality to your blog and thank you for the opportunity to express my own views.

Thank you Trish for explaining this all so beautifully! You make some excellent points and I also have found that the Law of Attraction can be a bit of a curse- mainly because I get a bit obsessed trying to obliterate ALL negative thoughts 🙂 (this is only when I’m in a bipolar episode- think it gives my brain OCD food!!). So I try not to take it all too seriously, but maybe have periods in the day where I consciously practice positive, loving thoughts and feelings towards myself and others, but try and chill out about it the rest of the day. I think mindfulness and awareness are so important here and not judging our more negative, unloving thoughts.

I love the fact you’ve written about accepting the ego needs- I also agree, I’m not sure I expressed this in the post very well. I think accepting our “human-ness” is essential in beginning to live as our true selves. Non-judgment of our ego is key I guess. In surrender to Spirit I’m not suggesting it swallow us whole- but that we feel that unconditional love towards every single bit of us, warts and all. I think I have an awareness of my higher and lower self almost as two sides of me; the lower self seems to resent the higher self sometimes, but more and more is accepting that I am choosing to live as my higher self. Hopefully one day they’ll both get on fine!!

You talk of the feeling of deep gratitude being so important in raising our vibration and again I totally agree. It’s not just about saying thank you, but feeling it from the heart.

You’ve pretty much written a brilliant post here Trish. Thank you so much for sharing your insight.

I have wondered something for awhile now. I was a full believer in the law of attraction and was living it with success. I was even teaching classes on it. My thoughts suddenly turned very negative and suicidal ,I couldn’t change my thoughts, it was so strong! I thought it was from a tragic loss that happened at the SAME time. I got worse and worse till I was losing my memory and couldn’t drive. I did not realize till later that it was new medicine I was placed on!!! .Most people or their Dr realize when this happens and they go off the meds right away. I didn’t and I cried non stop for 15 months .What chance that it all happened at once plus I changed Drs and the new Dr didn’t know anything about the meds but continued to give them to me anyway. It was so scarily that my mind and my thoughts could be changed like that and I had no control over it,. That was 5 yrs ago and cause I took the medicine for so long and it slowed down my brain . I have never reached the point that I once was and still “feel” and think of dying every day. I worry about the vibration of my emotions and what I’m creating . I still listen to Abraham everyday and try to be positive. Its been a hard 5 yrs and I never dreamed something like this could happen. By the way , all of my many spiritual friends in the group turned their back on me when it first happened and I was so sad (have to be positive or they considered you “a negative” person. ] I thought that was one of the reasons I felt sad too. Anyway I guess my question is What if you can’t control your thoughts and you “feel” bad? I don’t know how to get out of this cause it is physical at this point and not just mental.

My instinct with you is to recommend a good course of reiki healing. I do honestly think that at some point, depression or life can get so bad that it is extremely difficult to change your thoughts, but you CAN do it. I feel reiki might just help you to get back into a state of balance and heal past issues. Once you are feeling more balanced, and “better”, changing your thoughts to more positive ones should become easier. It CAN be done!! Keep telling yourself it is possible!! It takes practice and patience and effort.

When I was depressed I couldn’t say to myself “I love myself” because I’d just end up saying it in a sarcastic kind of way, so that didn’t work. Instead, I started with “I am OK”. This was easier to believe and did provide some comfort and reassurance. I built up to “I approve of myself” “I forgive myself” and now “I love myself”. This took months! I still never stop practicing! My best time to practice is on my dog walks!!

It can be worth spending time with a journal, writing out little affirmations which you think will work for you.

Sorry to hear about your spiritual group, maybe you will be able to find a more supportive one? I do know what you mean though about members wanting everyone to be “positive”, but it is also important for everyone to be non-judgmental, accepting and to learn to practice unconditional love. I hope you can forgive them.

The way you say your thoughts changed- quickly and to very negative, I would also say work with a spiritual coach as you may be picking up on somebody elses’ energy. The coach will be able to teach you how to keep other people’s energy away from your energy field.

Thank you . I tried to find someone to do EFT with me. I’ve had the training but couldn’t do it on myself the way I was feeling. My thoughts changed so quickly cause of the medicine, its the reason . The warnings that “may cause suicidal thoughts” are very real! Since then I have talked to a lot of people who have had the same thing happen but caught it right away. I didn’t cause of the other things that happened [and changing Drs ] . I wonder how many people take their lives only because of the medicine like that. You can’t control the over whelming feelings of sadness. I felt like a curtain of hopelessness dropped over me. And its not your own thoughts because I was doing the law of attraction at the time and it over ruled my conscious desire to “feel good” and think good thoughts.

Hi Rachel, I also have listened a lot to Abraham, but for me there were still too many unanswered questions. I have recently started reading The Gaia Effect by Monika Muranyi and listening to Kryon on youtube – wow! It’s really helped me understand so much more. I would love to hear what you and your other readers think about it. With love to everyone and so much appreciation for your Divine work, Sarah

I think we should not spend time questioning why, or being honest with ourselves. That is just reminding ourselves of the problem. while you being honest the resistance to your desires are increasing because you analysing all the bad and good that you experienced. Chances are the bad will exceed any good emotions.
We should rather focus on creation and maintaining a good feeling. the universe take care of the hows and the why’s do not matter.

Yes, focusing on the good feelings is definitely the key to attracting more good. There are many people in life, myself included, who wish to consciously grow spiritually- and without developing our insight into our life challenges, we would be unable to learn and grow from them.